Daynotes On A Budget, V6.0

I suppose it would be helpful if I put, here, why the six weekends between mid-August and late September are my favorite part of the year, assuming I am mentally and physically capable to walk a mile or so a day. Back forty years ago now, I was a dorky high school kid who enjoyed Dungeons and Dragons, regretted that I was living in a time where swords, armor, and dragons weren't around, not realizing that my slowness of foot and relatively poor build would positively assure at least one half-competent dragon a morsel.  Assuming, of course, he or she was looking for one.  Because, you know, in High School, there are incredibly important decisions and actions to take.  First of all, you need to decide you're going to continue to survive even though the world does not seem to realize you are as special as you think you are, and you need to deal with a real exposure to what the rest of your life may well be like, unless you grab the power to change it. And for me, well, I was...

 I have said it before, but as I said it last week to the pharmacist who was giving me the annual flu shot and the first of my three Hepatitis B vaccine, "if you say vaccine, I'll roll up my sleeve." That's not a blind stupidity.  That's from living for 46 years in close proximity to a man who acquired Polio at the age of 3, and yet survived.  He lost two brothers to other things - one was to what they now think was SIDS, while the other passed from Leukemia, now a treatable and often curable cancer.  It's also because I have had enough family members involved in health care who do the work and research, and know, good and well, how desperately these vaccines are often needed.   So if you see someone walking with a limp these days, it's most likely due to an injury, and not because they suffered a now-preventable illness that destroyed their muscle tone.   And probably the best analogy I've seen lately is this:  We're all on a boat together....

 It has been one of those weeks...   After last week's replacement of our exterior air conditioner unit, as the previous one was just flat out too old to be repaired, this week saw two more major appliances heading into the ... well, grey area. Long about Tuesday night, my wife turned on the oven.  Or that is, she tried to turn the oven on.  She smelled gas, but did not hear the typical "whoosh" that accompanies the oven lighting itself to warm up.  We have had some problems with the burners on the top of the stove also failing to light, though the igniter keeps clicking happily - and uselessly - away - but that is easily corrected with a lighter.  Which we keep handy.  But this was just flat out "oven no whoosh" - and so my wife entered a repair request on our landlord's "repair portal".  And she also texted the handyman fellow who keeps getting tasked with the first-call triage.   That wee problem was set for solution Friday - tha...

 In the age of COVID, it's probably a very good thing that I do not travel much. The news over this past week has been fairly... depressing. On the first hand, we have the mess that was Afghanistan.  I continue to be ... disappointed in the extreme when the people who think they are the ones who should be in charge overlook the painfully obvious. I am not an historian.  My father was a good one, interested by all history, and something of an expert on local history.  So with his example before me, I try to be something of an omnivore when it comes to history.  I am no expert on anything.  I am well-read in some history, while in other areas, I suppose the nicest way to put it is "dabble".  I read, I think, I move on. And when we return to the subject of Afghanistan, I think that we really need to take a moment and look at Italy and Germany.  Italy, until the 1800s, was a collection of what were known as "city-states" - that is, much like the Unite...